I’m curious about something. If a wealth person at the top of a tower with his name on it wanted to use an illegal drug, or one of his party guests wanted to do so, what real chance do they have of getting caught?
I’ve read that in many states, it’s not actually required to report most crimes you see, with some obvious exceptions. So if you’re in the penthouse suite, and the waitstaff, the private security, and all the other party guests don’t report the crimes to the cops*, do rich people just get away with it?
Robert Downey was in a hotel, but if he’d been in his home, he’d have gotten away scot free, right?
Plus, if the police do get called, can’t the private security lock the elevators and prevent the officers from reaching the penthouse suite until all the evidence is disposed of?
How does all this work? You watch Wolf of Wall Street, and it appears that you can just basically do drugs openly whenever you like, so long as you’re in a private members only club or at your place of business or home. I am wondering if it really works that way. (while poor people, of course, get stopped on the street and searched, and a small rock of crack in the bottom of their pocket is enough for a couple decades in prison, of course)
*since if they do report, they’ll be fired and blacklisted everywhere else, of course.
It does work that way to a large extent.
The rich and powerful seldom make the buy personally. Which is often the point of arrest.
Police concentrate on the easy targets. They are easier to swoop in on with little evidence to support it. The people in that situation usually have rap sheets, outstanding warrants, are acting suspiciously in the open, etc, etc…
Technically you need to have a good basis of suspicion of illegal activity to bust in. Or see it happening.
The further up the food chain, the less visible and actionable these things are. They also involve just using, not distributing. So are of less interest.
And of course, there is the power and connections. The high power lawyers that will be called in. Much ado that leads to mostly nothing. ( celebrity rehab, club fed )
The poorer folks are easier and cheaper to convict.
Basically, yes. High-end hotels aren’t generally in the business of policing their guests, especially the wealthy ones, as long as they aren’t bothering anyone else. All kinds of things go on in them that you can’t do legally in public including drugs and prostitution. Every hotel maid can tell you lots of stories. They generally don’t report it and they would probably get fired if they did. Every hotel in Las Vegas and New Orleans would shut down if that was the policy. Some hotels don’t like escorts hanging out in the lobby or marijuana smoking in the rooms because it smells so strongly but they generally just handle it themselves as a business matter.
There is also the complication that even hotel rooms in many states, let alone houses require a warrant for the police to enter unless there is something else going on like assault and battery in progress.
The other complication is that it is not illegal to have done drugs even ten minutes before. It is generally all about possession if you are in a private place and there are plenty of ways to get rid of them like the toilet or just have someone else take it away if you are rich enough.
Police searching the poor at random is a problem but the poor are making another simple legal mistake too by doing it in public. If they just kept it behind private doors, there wouldn’t be much the police could do unless it is something like a known crack house or a meth lab.
Those are just generalities but generally the way it is treated as a practical matter. There are plenty of exceptions.
You don’t have to be rich. The legal principle is, “ubi non accusator, ibi non judex.”
For a quantitative estimate, you can look at the colorful history of speakeasies in America. There were raids and people did get arrested, but some of the establishments would make efforts to disguise the nature of the place, lock the doors or otherwise delay the raiding agents, evacuate the patrons out the back, etc.
Hotel employees cannot enter to search your personal effects for contraband nor do they have your implied permission to give consent to the police to enter for such a search. 5 This means that if you leave illegal contraband in plain view and the cleaning crew sees it, they cannot call the cops and legally give them consent to search your room. What can happen is that they can report it to the hotel manager, who in turn can ask you to leave the hotel due to a violation of policy, which would cause you to lose your privacy interest. If you refuse to leave, you are now a trespasser and the hotel manager can call law enforcement and give them permission to enter and search the room.
My sister (upper middle class white, but not wealthy) used coke for maybe 20 years and the last thing that entered her mind was the possibility of getting arrested. I don’t know how she acquired it, but the police were targeting lower class blacks in the city, not whites in the suburbs.
I doubt that it matters much if you are rich or poor - drug use in private doesn’t usually get you busted, because the police never find out about it.
There are likely to be extra barriers to the police accessing the space where the drug use occurs, but there is a difference between seeing someone buy a couple of rocks on a street corner and getting a report from a chambermaid that Daddy Warbux was snorting coke off a hooker’s cleavage in his fifteenth floor apartment. Because you can just follow the crackhead and knock on the door of his mother’s apartment.
Robert Downey Jr. was busted for speeding, and carrying a handgun and possession of cocaine and possession of heroin. Public offenses, IOW.
Pretty sure it works that way for everyone. In fact, I’d wager “poor people” as the OP puts it, are actually less likely to get caught, as there’s not a brigade of photographers and reporters lurking around 24/7 waiting to pick up some dirt.
It doesn’t mean much if a brigade of photographers picks up some dirt; you can’t be convicted of a drug crime solely based on, say, a photograph of you snorting coke. Unless you’re stupid enough to say, “yes, that is me, snorting cocaine, within the territorial jurisdiction of this court and within the last three years,” or whatever. If you mean the police are more likely to catch people who are frequently photographed using drugs, well, no not really. If the cops were particularly interested in catching famous people in possession of drugs, they would just pull over tour buses.
Your source is only talking about warrantless searches. Law enforcement can certainly get a warrant based on a tip from a hotel maid, and then search your room whether or not the hotel gives them consent.
It’s a little disconcerting that you regard the Fourth Amendment as a “complication.”
This. Rich or poor, if you’re quietly smoking weed in your own home with the curtains drawn, nothing’s going to happen. OTOH, if you watch a few episodes of COPS, you regularly see not-so-bright people parked behind strip malls toking up in their car when the police roll up - or people get pulled over for a minor traffic violation and have drugs/paraphernalia in plain view on the center console.
As to the court of public opinion and its consequences for your celebrity career, probably not so much. The public is quite willing to “convict” on the basis of a single photo. Meanwhile other elements are equally ready to excuse on the same basis.
Bottom line: as arbitrary as the legal system sometimes seems, it’s nowhere near as arbitrary and capricious as the public is about which celebs get a pass for what bad acts in which era. But any consequences certainly need that initial exposure by paparazzi or similar to get the ball rolling.
Blacks are way more likely to be arrested for drugs than whites. And I’d assume poor inner city blacks are far more likely to be arrested than upper middle class whites.
Also if you are rich, the people around you are financially benefitting from you. So they’ll help cover it up. Why would a hotel or bar turn you in if you are spending thousands of dollars on them?
During the height of the crack epidemic, wasn’t some law enforcement official asked to name any white people arrested for crack, and couldn’t do it?
Anyway, yeah you can get arrested. But you probably won’t.
Are you sure? I’ve heard stories of dick cops bringing drug sniffing dogs into dorms to just detect drugs.
Can a drug sniffing dog be used to justify searching a residence without the owners consent? If a dog sniffs at your door and signals, is that alone enough to justify entering and searching?
My personal experience - grew up in a suburb with wealthy parents in the 70’s. Caught with a few joints. Cops took them and said “Seal_cleaner, go home.” That was the end of it.
Edit: my father would have been pissed had he found out. He wouldn’t have wanted me in jail, but probably wanted me punished somehow.
Same here. Mostly. I grew up in New York City. Solidly middle-class. Got caught with some friends smoking weed in Central Park once. Cops confiscated the weed and threw us out of the park.
Also got caught drinking beer in another city park. Same thing.
I think that because we were white middle-class kids that the cops could relate to, we got a break that poor, or at least poorer, black kids might not have gotten.
That’s exactly right. In my 20 years in law enforcement I can say that the vast majority of those arrested for drug use are using in their car. If they stayed at home no one would know what they were doing. Those few that were busted at home it was usually because they did something else bad like domestic violence which is why we were called. This is in a strictly middle class to lower middle class area with no rich people.
